947770

research-article2020
ABSXXX10.1177/0002764220947770American Behavioral ScientistNursyazwani

Article
American Behavioral Scientist

Mobile Refugee: Rohingya

2020, Vol. 64(10) 1444­–1457
© 2020 SAGE Publications
Article reuse guidelines:
Refugees’ Practices of sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0002764220947770
https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764220947770
Imaginary Citizenship in journals.sagepub.com/home/abs

Klang Valley, Malaysia

Nursyazwani1

Abstract
In this age of border securitization, mobility has largely been discussed as a privilege
accorded to citizens. The assumption is that refugees or undocumented persons are
usually denied such mobility. The management and surveillance of refugees through
documentation processes by both the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees and the host country further obstruct their freedom. However, in Malaysia,
urban and mobile Rohingya refugees disrupt the linkage between citizenship and
mobilities. In fact, being conferred refugee status in Malaysia has made Rohingyas
relatively more mobile than they had been previously in Myanmar or Bangladesh’s
refugee camps. Drawing from fieldwork in Klang Valley from 2017 to 2019, I propose
the concept of “mobile refugee” to rethink mobility and citizenship. I argue that
Rohingya refugees practice “imaginary citizenship” as a form of political participation
to claim their rights with the aid of the UN refugee card. This article highlights the
need to reinterpret mobility by situating it in the dynamics of citizenship practices of
refugees and their engagement with documents as they seek to imagine and invent
their future aspirations of becoming political subjects.

Keywords
mobility, documents, Rohingya refugees, citizenship, subjectivity

Introduction
Back in Arakan, we just stay in the village, we didn’t have IC [Identity Card] like the
other Burmese . . . Even if we want to go to another village to visit our family or what,

1
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Corresponding Author:
Nursyazwani, National University of Singapore, 11 Arts Link, #03-06 AS1, Singapore 117573, Singapore.
Email: nursyazwani.j@u.nus.edu
Nursyazwani 1445

we need to get permission . . . It took them so long to get permission then they need to
pay so much bribes to the police.
—Fatimah (45-year-old).1

Fatimah’s narrative of never leaving her village while living in Northern Rakhine
State (NRS) was one that I heard repeatedly from my Rohingya interlocutors in
Malaysia. As Myanmar does not recognize Rohingyas as citizens—and instead
referred to them as “illegal Bengali migrants,” Rohingyas are excluded from rights
accorded to citizens. Such rights include limited access to education, health, employ-
ment rights (Wong & Tan, 2012), and as Fatimah pointed above, freedom of move-
ment even within Myanmar itself. While residents living in towns are relatively more
mobile than those who live in villages, they are largely limited to movements within
the townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung (Ostrand, 2020). The lack,
or rather absence, of legitimate state documents availed to Myanmar citizens made
Rohingyas vulnerable to discriminatory practices and continued suppression by the
state. And although there were stories of Rohingyas being educated in the city of
Yangon, their educational journeys were often achieved with painstaking effort and at
high cost, usually involving fake documents.
The lack of mobility among Rohingyas largely stemmed from Myanmar’s policies
that have systematically excluded them from the nation–state, particularly since the
establishment of the military junta in 1962. The 1982 Citizenship Law compounded
this problem by denying citizenship to most Rohingyas, making them essentially state-
less (Nyi Nyi, 2017). State persecutions culminated in the NRS crises in 2012, 2016
and 2017 that globalized the Rohingya issue. This produced an exodus of Rohingyas
attempting to cross the borders of South Asia and several Southeast Asian countries,
especially Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Resultingly, Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh
has grown to host nearly a million Rohingya refugees (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2020b), making it currently the largest refu-
gee camp in the world despite Bangladesh being a nonsignatory to the 1951 United
Nations Convention Related to the Status of Refugees. While the Rohingya population
in Cox’s Bazar is composed of those who fled from NRS, there are also second- and
third-generation Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in the refugee camps
(Farzana, 2016).
Although the Bangladeshi state has tolerated Rohingyas’ presence for decades, its
attitude toward refugees fluctuates based on the country’s politics (Human Rights
Watch, 2019; Lewis, 2019). What remains constant is the state’s position that
Rohingyas are not allowed access to rights such as education and employment rights.
Resultingly, many refugees in Bangladesh attempted to escape the stasis of their
camp lives by seeking refuge in Malaysia. Often, Rohingyas would seek smugglers’
help to bring them to Malaysia—either to join their families or in search of better
opportunities.
The movement of Rohingyas seeking asylum across borders marked the first time
that many left the compounds of their villages or towns. Such forms of involuntary
mobility reflect the hypermobility of asylum-seekers and/or refugees brought about by
1446 American Behavioral Scientist 64(10)

forced migration (Kalir et al., 2012). Yet during border crossings and encounters with
state authorities and border mechanisms, many Rohingyas were discriminated because
of their stateless status, further complicating their claims to being a refugee. Even on
successful registration with the UNHCR, the process of documenting persons-of-con-
cern and placing them in refugee camps or shelters forecloses their right to move
(Franke, 2009). Such surveillance of refugees is further assisted with the UN refugee
card that arguably marked the body as an other. The implications of such state efforts
to control the transgressive nature of forced mobility constrained the refugee’s right to
be mobile.
I employ the term “refugee” here to refer to persons who have been processed and
registered as a refugee by the UNHCR. Once registered, these refugees are issued a
UNHCR identity card—or in short, the UN card—that details their biodata including
their country of origin. The UN card “provides a level of protection which may reduce
the risk of arrest, and allow limited access to health services, education and other
essential support services from UNHCR, its partner organizations or other actors”
(UNHCR, 2019a). However, since Malaysia is not party to the 1951 UN Refugee
Convention, the UN card is only an “identity document and has no formal legal value
in Malaysia” (UNHCR, 2019a). In fact, registered refugees are considered as undocu-
mented migrants under the Malaysian Immigration Act (Ahmad et al., 2017).
Nonetheless, for many Rohingya interlocutors, the internationally recognized UN card
distinguishes them from the common undocumented migrant: the card has the “power”
to move refugees from being merely undocumented to being considered a “legal”
person, although with limited rights.
Where the mobility of refugees was surfaced in academic discourses, discussions
often highlight their immobility (Campbell, 2007; Sommers, 2001) or explore experi-
ences of mobility within refugee camps or in borderland areas (Brees, 2010; Johnson,
2012). By studying the experiences of urban refugees in a nonsignatory state, this
article aims to demonstrate the heterogeneity of refugee experiences and contest the
notion that refugees are immobilized. In particular, this article seeks to underline refu-
gees’ voluntary mobility. To be a mobile refugee is to have the capacity to exercise
agency and the freedom to determine how and what mobility means for them. Being
voluntarily mobile is therefore associated with notion of rights that is accorded to citi-
zens, or at least documented persons—but not refugees, especially in nonsignatory
countries with no refugee legal framework.
Unlike other refugee communities such as the Chin, Karen, and Mon, Rohingyas
are stateless and their illegality is marked by the absence of legal state documentation
in Myanmar. Being recognized as refugees transforms their undocumented status to a
person with legitimate rights. The UN card not only materializes their refugee status
but also offers Rohingyas a way to belong to a world where documents matter. As
many interlocutors told me, the UN card was the first document they have received in
their lives. Being registered as a “refugee”—particularly in an urban environment,
opened them up to new imaginations of the political subject (Bayat, 2010; Isin, 2002).
Through Rohingyas’ everyday practices with the UN card in Malaysia, they are able to
exercise claims to rights which they were unable to do previously—generated by the
newfound mobility they experience as urban refugees. Thinking with the document
Nursyazwani 1447

thus allows us to interrogate the imagined mobility that Rohingya refugees have which
offers them a site to lay claims on rights.
As such, I propose mobile refugee as a conceptual tool to rethink the heterogeneity
of the refugee experience and to destabilize prevailing notions that refugees are immo-
bile. Mobility, as a performance and an act of citizenship (Isin, 2008; Nyers & Rygiel,
2014), paves the way for imaginary citizenship as a form of political participation for
stateless persons or refugees (see Bayat, 2010; McNevin, 2014). Mobile refugee there-
fore allows us to trace how new subjectivities are generated. Theorizing from the
experiences of urban stateless refugees in a Southeast Asian context where the refugee
legal framework is absent allows us to reconsider refugeeness (see Häkli et al., 2017).
To do so, this article will first offer a background of Rohingya refugees in Klang
Valley before exploring notions of citizenship tied to mobility and the everyday prac-
tices of mobility that assemble the “mobile refugee.”

Rohingya Refugees in Klang Valley, Malaysia

Over the course of my ethnographic fieldwork between 2017 and 2019, I conducted
interviews with 58 Rohingyas with nearly equal participation of male and female
Rohingyas living in Klang Valley, aged between 18 and 60 years old. The majority of
them had been in Malaysia for at least 2 years; many had fled NRS during the 2016
NRS conflict. There were also substantial numbers who arrived in Malaysia following
the 2012 Rakhine conflict while a minority had been in Malaysia since the 1980s or
1990s. Around a quarter of my interlocutors—mostly young men, were born and
raised in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Additionally, I encountered second- and third-gen-
eration Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in Malaysia.
Currently, Malaysia has over 170,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers
where more than half are Rohingyas (UNHCR, 2020a). This makes Malaysia one of
the largest recipients of refugees and asylum-seekers in Southeast Asia despite being a
nonsignatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Unlike Malaysia’s manage-
ment of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s, Rohingya and other refugee communities
live autonomously in urban environments where they are more “vulnerable to exploi-
tation, arrest or detention, and can be forced to compete with the poorest local workers
for the worst jobs” (UNHCR, 2019b). While Malaysia tolerates refugee presence and
permits the establishment of UNHCR offices in the country, refugees are only allowed
to stay in Malaysia, but have no legal access to employment or education.

Becoming Mobile Refugee

The UN Card and Refugee Mobility
Numerous literature has explored the making of borders that further entrench govern-
ment control through the differentiation of bodies by means of documentations
(Keshavarz, 2018; Torpey, 2000). This regime of surveillance privileges the circula-
tion of some people more than other racialized persons who are often perceived with
1448 American Behavioral Scientist 64(10)

suspicion and fear. Such state practice is concurrent with the way in which documents
are used as tools for states to authorize mobility, particularly for unwanted bodies
(Berg, 2017; Keshavarz. 2018). For stateless persons like Rohingyas in Malaysia, the
absence of documents such as passports, the UN card, driving license, or birth certifi-
cates, only serves to transform them into suspicious bodies who are illegal, constrain-
ing their mobility. The capacity to exercise the freedom to move has been at the core
of discussions with regard to refugee rights as host states turn to mobility as a form of
control and discipline. Such discussions are not only limited to states but also interna-
tional organizations, such as the UNHCR and International Organization for Migration,
which stipulate that refugees are not allowed to leave the refugee camps (U.S.
Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2019). The UN card marked refugees as an
other—as bodies that require policing and whose mobility is curtailed. Such normal-
ization of othering feeds into the notion of refugees as immobilized with no “right to
have rights” (Arendt, 1994).
However, discussions surrounding the bare life and immobilization of refugees often
draw from Agamben’s and Arendt’s conceptions of refugees without considering the
context of their work (Wong & Tan, 2012). Studies have shown that the porosity of refu-
gee camps challenges the legal regime (Farzana, 2016; Jacobsen, 2005). Brees (2008,
2010) discusses how refugees leave the camps to seek employment, which also blurs the
boundaries between a migrant laborer and a refugee. My research with Rohingya refu-
gees also highlights the experiences of mobility for UN card holders. While there were
instances when registered refugees were deported, changes in Malaysian policy toward
Rohingya refugees particularly after 2012 effected in the growing authority of the UN
card (Ekklesia & Fitriani, 2018; Wong & Tan, 2012), thereby increasing refugee protec-
tion for Rohingyas. Taufiq, a 40-year-old Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia in 1992
said that prior to 2012, state authorities did not seem to know about Rohingyas. In fact,
Taufiq like many who had been in Malaysia before 2000, shared that he was often mis-
taken as an undocumented migrant by the authorities. Taufiq had been deported to
Myanmar through the Thai-Burma border on a couple of occasion (before returning to
Malaysia) and detained numerous times by the police or immigration authorities.
However, the growing visibility and recognition of Rohingyas’ plight after 2012 and the
2015 Andaman Sea Crisis appeared to soften state authorities’ attitude toward Rohingyas.
As Taufiq told me, “90% of the time . . . [the police] will just let us go [after 2012] after
they see the UN card . . . so I can go anywhere now without worry.”
As such, while mobility is often seen as a biopolitical apparatus of the state to con-
trol its population (Berg, 2017; Johnson, 2012), it has also become “synonymous with
freedom, with transgression, with creativity, with life itself” (Cresswell, 2006, p. 3)
accorded to persons with legitimate documents. For Taufiq, possessing the UN card
that is invested with state recognition offers Rohingyas an opportunity to be mobile,
even if only for “90% of the time.” The biopolitical reality of the world of documenta-
tion requires that subjects have proofs of documentation to show that they belong. For
Rohingya refugees, the UN card is proof that although they are not citizens, they are
legitimate persons—and not undocumented migrants—who have the right to be in
Malaysia. Although Malaysian legal and administrative framework does not denote
Nursyazwani 1449

refugees to be neither legal nor illegal, the significance of the card is such that it aids
Rohingyas’ imagined mobility. While the lack of a legal framework for refugees pro-
duces precarity, Rohingyas exert their agentic potential within the interstices of this
ambivalence in order to authorize their own mobility and belonging to the social world
they are embedded in. Mobile refugee thus implies the force—imaginative or real, that
engenders the transformation of the refugee’s agentic potential to lay claims to rights
and (re)produce the political subject.

Imaginary Citizenship
Citizenship scholars have discussed the growing importance of mobility as a signifi-
cant characteristic of citizenship, particularly in the context of globalization and secu-
ritization of borders (Nyers & Rygiel, 2014; Rygiel, 2010; Sheller & Urry, 2006). For
refugees and undocumented migrants, the regulation of the right to be mobile demon-
strates the key role that mobility plays in producing subjectivity, which determines
their ability to make claims to these rights (Nyers & Rygiel, 2014). Since “the govern-
ing of mobility is directly connected to constructions of citizenship”—for instance in
Rohingyas’ daily encounters with state mechanisms, for example, security checks,
being in public spaces, or travelling to work or to markets—mobility becomes an
“integral part of processes of making and unmaking citizen subjects” (Nyers & Rygiel,
2014, p. 4). These tensions and contradictions that Rohingyas experienced in their
daily lives led them to aspire for citizen-like rights and imagine themselves as political
subjects who can make rights claims.
In thinking about citizenship in relation to (stateless) refugees, the growing mobil-
ity of citizens and noncitizens have brought about “webs of rights and obligations”
that transcend state discourse (Isin, 2008, p. 15). Such discussions also reflect critical
works on “citizenship from below” (Isin, 2002, 2008; Nyers & Rygiel, 2014), where
citizenship “emerges in practice, in the claims and counterclaims of what it means to
belong, in the repetitive acts through which people are marked as one of us or one of
them and places as ours or theirs” (McNevin, 2014, p. 167). These acts of citizenship
“transform forms and modes of being political by bringing into being new actors as
activist citizens” who make rights claims through “creating new sites and scales of
struggle” (Isin, 2008, p. 39). As many Rohingya interlocutors shared, their mobility
was facilitated by the UN card, allowing them to participate in everyday acts that local
and foreign citizens undertake. Through these acts of citizenship (Isin, 2008), one
makes his or her presence known and seen in the public space as a call for recognition
for his or her belonging to that civic space. Rohingyas’ “quiet encroachment” (Bayat,
2010) into these spaces redefines the notion of citizenship in these spaces of encoun-
ters and movements and where the political subject emerges.

Everyday Mobility and Practices of Citizenship

Being a citizen entails certain forms of rights which Rohingyas aspire to have.
These rights are materialized and reproduced through their engagement in public/
1450 American Behavioral Scientist 64(10)

civic spaces, and in practices associated with the citizen. At the same time, refugee
encounters with local Malaysians remind them of the limited rights they possess as
noncitizens. In exploring the mobile refugee, I look at three sites and scales that
point to the creative breaks where within the ruptures of everyday life, one can see
how Rohingyas imagine themselves and aspire to have citizen-like rights.

The Local(ized) Refugee: “Macam Orang Malaysia” [“Just Like

Malaysian people”]
“You know, this is why I love Malaysia,” Rafiq suddenly said amid the peals of laugh-
ter from others,

at least here, we can sit until 11 at night, just like everybody else because we got the UN
card. In Arakan, we cannot be out so late, cannot hangout with friends unless you want to
be shot and killed.

He laughed wryly, as the others around nodded in agreement. I was sitting in a local
coffee shop with three Rohingya youths: Rafiq, Kamal and Rohani. Rafiq, a 22-year-
old Rohingya, arrived in Malaysia in 2016. He fled from the violence that erupted in
his village in NRS to Bangladesh before deciding to engage smugglers to bring him to
Malaysia. He had family here, he told me, and Malaysia was sold as a dream destina-
tion to many Rohingyas languishing in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. While he
realized later that there were limits to the Malaysian Dream, his encounters in Malaysia
generate lived/perceived experiences of citizen-like rights. As rights are often associ-
ated with mobility, becoming mobile allow refugees to exercise “freedom,” a notion
that is often divorced from the subjectivity of refugees.
Acts such as “hanging out” at these coffee shops were often highlighted by many
Rohingya interlocutors as an act of “freedom.” In exercising their right to choose how
they order their time and to be in a space inhabited by legal persons and citizens,
Rohingya refugees contest the disciplinary regime imposed on refugee bodies. For
many like Rafiq, there was little reason to fear the authorities because the UN card
engenders an imagination of themselves as legal subjects in Malaysia—that they were
not illegal persons but “legal” refugees with rights. Such lived experiences as refugees
stand in stark contrast with their experiences as Rohingyas in NRS where they were
under constant state surveillance with limited mobility. Rohingya interlocutors
recounted their experiences in NRS where permits were required to visit another vil-
lage or town, which often came at a price since they were not considered citizens.
Freedom of movement in Malaysia thus offers refugees the space to imagine them-
selves as having citizen-like rights. The imagined transformation of the refugee self
into a “local resident” in Malaysia not only suggests new subjectivities that emerge
from their lived experiences but also reflects their desire to challenge the limits of
refugee mobility by contesting their right to belong in these ordinary spaces where
locals frequent.
Nursyazwani 1451

Such sentiments are largely made possible with the UN card easing Rohingyas’
mobility. As Rohani, Rafiq’s 20-year-old friend, shared,

We have the UN card, that’s like our IC. Even if [police] want to detain us, they cannot
keep us for long. Of course, some people will pay money but these people, it’s because
they don’t know how to speak lah to the police. Anyway, the police now know the UN
card, they cannot pretend to say that they don’t know . . . (Rohani, 20-year-old)

Besides imagining the UN card as a national IC—hence elevating the document’s

status, Rohani also alludes to the card’s growing authority among state authorities. The
circulation of the card, by showing it to the police on request, illuminates the role of
various actors in Malaysia in producing meaning in the card; more than meaning, the
material dimension of power is captured in the card—its circulation empowers the
card and its holder as it becomes credible currency in the social transaction of their
everyday life. The card, as a tool of mobility, enables the recognition of Rohingyas by
the authorities, facilitating Rohingyas’ movement and generating aspirations for simi-
lar rights to be accorded to them—if not in Myanmar, in Malaysia.

(In)Authentic UN Cards and Mobility

“But you know,” Rafiq continued, “sometimes even when the card is real, the police
if they want money, they’ll make problem. The other day, the police damaged my
friend’s card and said “see, you don’t have a UN card and the police asked my friend
for money or he would be arrested . . . my friend didn’t want trouble so he paid,”
Rafiq let out a small laugh. As aforementioned, although many Rohingyas have been
registered with the UNHCR, there remain a significant number of unregistered
Rohingyas in Malaysia. Aminah, a 43-year-old Rohingya woman, fled the NRS in
2015. She arrived in Malaysia in early 2016 and underwent the refugee registration
process. As the UNHCR’s Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process takes
between a few months to a year or so, these refugees often live in precarity: a state of
not-yet being refugees. The only evidence of being a refugee is found on a flimsy
piece of A4 paper issued by the UNHCR in place of the UN card which details the
refugee’s biodata. While some refugees laminated the paper to prevent damage, they
lamented that it lacked the authority and legitimacy of a plastic UN card. Consequently,
refugees like Aminah often chose to stay at home instead of going out because she
was “always scared that police [would] catch [them]” since the paper was not seen as
sufficient proof of their refugee status.
However, as a way of survival, Aminah’s husband, Karim, bought them a forged
UN card from the black market while waiting for the RSD’s outcome.2 Karim, a
46-year-old Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia in late 2015 was driven by necessity
for income. The forged UN card, coupled with the temporary paper representing his
refugee identity, was “sufficient” in maneuvering Malaysia’s landscape. Karim
worked as a garbage collector; he also scavenged for recyclable materials that could
be sold. There were times when Karim was stopped by the police either for
1452 American Behavioral Scientist 64(10)

document check or as a potential victim for extortion. Whenever the police refused
to recognize the card’s authenticity, Karim would use the forged document to play
up his refugee—and Rohingya—identity either to evoke police sympathy or as a
tool to negotiate the bribe. Although Karim admitted that it was easier to bribe the
police, he still believed that being a refugee with the UN Card offered him mobility
and the space to lay claims to rights, which he was unable to do as a Rohingya in
Myanmar.
A year after his arrival in Malaysia, Karim received the authentic UN card, render-
ing his forged document irrelevant. More importantly, since he received the document
from UNHCR, he felt less anxious regarding his status in Malaysia. Such reduced
anxiety was also felt by Aminah who “dared to leave [her] house with [Karim].”
Despite instances when the couple were held up for document checks by the police,
they were often released. Aminah shared an incident when they were stopped by a
police officer. On verifying the authenticity of Karim’s UN document, the officer
looked at Aminah’s card briefly before letting the couple go. The lack of police sur-
veillance on Aminah lessened her fear over time of being caught with the forged docu-
ment. As long as her husband possessed an authentic UN card, Aminah felt “protected”
even with a counterfeit document. When she finally received the UN card from the
UNHCR, Aminah said that she felt relieved as she no longer had to worry about the
police discovering her document was forged. While gender dimensions played a con-
siderable role—underlining the different levels of mobility that male and female
Rohingyas experience, such everyday practices with the UN card also allude to the
materiality of the document in securing rights for refugees while fueling their political
aspirations. However, in thinking about the significance of the card and its implica-
tions on mobile refugee, it is also important to interrogate second- and third-generation
Rohingyas’ experiences in Malaysia.

“I Didn’t Know I Was not Malaysian”

Halfway through our conversation, Kamal asked me if I would have known that
Rohani, who sat across me, was Rohingya. “No,” I admitted, “If I didn’t know you, I’d
thought you were Malaysian.” Her fashion choice, her fluency in the Malay language
and to some extent, her physical appearance, formed the basis of my response. Rohani
is a second-generation Rohingya who was born and raised in Malaysia. Her parents
arrived in Malaysia in the 1990s and like many other undocumented children, had
attended public schools up until Primary 6 as they had no legal document to register
for the national examinations. That was when Rohani realized that she was not a
Malaysian but in fact a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar. When she became conscious
of her Rohingya identity, she sought to distinguish herself from first-generation
Rohingyas whom she felt were “backward and unsophisticated.” She represented
many Rohingyas who were born and/or raised in Malaysia and adopted more Malaysian
markers (e.g., Malaysian-styled hijab, local accent). Resultingly, these Rohingyas
were not scrutinized as frequently by the police as first-generation Rohingyas who
stood out more:
Nursyazwani 1453

It’s very easy for people like me, I look Malay, I sound very Malay . . . usually police
don’t stop me if I’m on my own but whenever I’m with them [points to Kamal and Rafiq]
. . . then they’ll ask me for IC. But it’s okay, I’m not scared. I carry UN card with me all
the time, just like how Malaysians always have to carry their IC . . . (Rohani,
20-year-old)

As such, many of these local born and/or raised Rohingyas’ mobility was facilitated
not only by the UN card but also by their sartorial and vernacular expressions. As refu-
gees who “look local,” Rohani and many others like her are able to access resources
and spaces with ease, making them more mobile than other Rohingya refugees.
Moreover, Rohani’s language skills landed her jobs with nongovernmental organiza-
tions where she was exposed to human rights discourses. As a consequence, many
Rohingyas like Rohani become not only cultural brokers of Malaysia for newly arrived
refugees but also rights-brokers. As rights-brokers, they shared knowledge of refugee
rights and strategies to negotiate their everyday life with newly arrived refugees in a
nonsignatory country. People like Rohani become important in generating more mobile
refugees in the Rohingya community, especially among first-generation Rohingyas.
Yet, while the UN card appears to be less relevant for these second- or third-gener-
ation Rohingyas, the card is still important as it ascribes state legitimacy that facilitates
her mobility. The parallel drawn between the quotidian act of carrying the UN card and
the IC reveals Rohani’s imagination of becoming part of the society she is in. These
everyday practices that are associated with Malaysians’ acts become a way for them to
transform their imagination of being mobile, to think of themselves as subjects with
rights by reclaiming their right to be in these spaces. Concurrently, the gap in everyday
opportunities and lived reality of Rohingyas and their Malaysian counterparts under-
line the limitations of possessing the UN card vis-à-vis Malaysian ICs. Such realiza-
tion points to the lack of rights Rohingyas experience, engendering their desire to be
treated as human and become political subjects through rights contestation.

Conclusion: “Kita Pun Orang Juga”

“Kita pun orang juga” or we are also humans, was a phrase I kept hearing in my con-
versations with many Rohingya interlocutors. This article delved into their world to
understand how Rohingyas construct themselves as mobile refugees and (re)produce
refugeeness. Their encounters with other actors in Malaysia introduce them to values
of equality and justice, and notions of rights that were previously elusive. The posses-
sion of the UN card transforms their imagination of being an “orang”—just like
another Malaysian or citizen—and creates conditions and subjectivities that they
aspire toward. Making claims to rights to be seen as an “orang” also reflects Rohingyas’
survival strategies “where they find alternative ways of imagining and constituting
themselves as political subjects, or remain excluded” (Berg, 2017, p. 229). They enact
themselves as political beings within the assemblage that they are in. More so, residing
in nonsignatory countries makes ambivalent the legality of their bodies, allowing them
more space and flexibility to traverse the spaces between refugees and locals.
1454 American Behavioral Scientist 64(10)

While it is important not to understate refugees’ harsh everyday realities nor to

overvalorize the potency of the UN card (Prasse-Freeman, in-review), this article
underlined how documents can be (re)appropriated as a tool of emancipation. The
notions of rights and citizenship attached to the UN card gave rise to the aspirations of
citizenship among Rohingyas, especially since being legal or legitimate residents of a
country is associated with proof of citizenship. As Rohingyas begin to remake their
life-worlds in a new and unfamiliar setting, they attach themselves to the UN card in
order to make sense of the new place they found themselves. The card allows them to
be mobile and concomitantly aspire to be citizens, which provides them with the
potential and opportunity to mitigate and move beyond bare life, hence reshaping refu-
gee subjectivity—as one who actively participates in (everyday) politics to assert and
claim his/her rights. The card thus embodies more than the present—they do things in,
and for, the future where the refugee hopes to be a human being with rights.
This article has proposed mobile refugee as a concept to destabilize notions of refu-
gees’ immobility. Through their presence in Malaysia, Rohingya refugees transform, and
are transformed by the various sociopolitical landscapes in Malaysia. Stories like
Rohani’s and Rohmat’s illustrate Rohingya refugees’ desire to pursue new ways of rei-
magining their communities and themselves beyond just being refugees. Their everyday
practices rupture the binary of the refugee/citizen social worlds, and Rohingyas enact
moments of imaginary citizenship in these interstices. The emphasis on the word “orang”
draws attention to their new subjectivities as human beings who can and should be able
to lay claims to preserve their dignity. As Taufiq (afore mentioned) shared,

I’d only agree to return home if we are given equal citizenship like other Myanmar
people, like Malaysians in Malaysia . . . I want a passport, and if I want to go for
pilgrimage, I should be able to.

Having a state-recognized document like a passport enables one to be mobile which

paves the way to make claims to rights. The UN card, the document closest to a state
document for many Rohingyas, transforms their sociopolitical imagination. Becoming
mobile allows them to experience certain rights that were previously elusive in
Myanmar. Mobile refugee therefore provokes the notion of refugeeness as one that
contains multiple subjectivities. Within the mobile refugee thus emerges the political
subject who aspires to be recognized as citizens and afforded with rights as one.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the insights of Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Kelvin E.Y.
Low, Elliott Prasse-Freeman, and Andrew Lee Ser Han in the initial drafts of the paper. The
author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that helped
improve the article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Nursyazwani 1455

Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: This research was supported by the National University of
Singapore through the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ Graduate Research Support Scheme;
and ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute through the Tun Dato Sir Cheng-Lock Tan MA Scholarship.

ORCID iD
Nursyazwani https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8250-5496

Notes
1. I use pseudonyms for all the first names of my interlocutors.
2. See The Star (2019, October 25). “Fake UNHCR and MyRC cards selling for RM200.”
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/10/25/fake-unhcr-and-myrc-cards-selling-
for-rm200; Malay Mail. (2018, February 15). “Rohingya man with fake UNHCR card
detained in Kuala Terengganu.” https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2018/02/15/
rohingya-man-with-fake-unhcr-card-detained-in-kuala-terengganu/1578619

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Author Biography
Nursyazwani received her M.Soc.Sci. from the Department of Sociology at the National
University of Singapore. Her Master’s research discusses the co-construction of refugee legibil-
ity among Rohingyas in Malaysia based on her fieldwork since 2017. She is currently pursuing
her PhD studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Anthropology.